Some shoes can certainly be put in the washer but not all. The key difference in putting your shoes in the washer vs cleaning them by hand is that putting shoes in the washer are for rinsing and cleaning shoes by hand is for removing dirt.
A washer simply rinses the shoe and does not clean as well as agitation does. (though it can do this well with specialized shoe cleaning detergent pods that can be found at Reshoevn8r) but the drawbacks of the fundamental physics principle will always have agitation as the best way of cleaning a shoe. This is why if you put your clothes in the laundry, they tumble and spin on each other and get cleaned by agitation. But putting a couple of pairs of shoes in the washer rinses the shoe but keeps a full good clean limited and can damage your shoes if they are not designed for a washing machine cycle.
Cleaning by hand uses agitation on the material which loosens dirt. This is done by the force of a brush or microfiber cloth which uses kinetic force to ‘wipe’ away dirt.
What shoecleaning.com can do for you is clean your shoe with both rinsing with a washing machine and using kinetic energy through agitation of the material. I also understand the different material requirements of the shoe as to not damage it but to clean shoes effectively. While shoecleaning.com does only local shoe cleaning at the moment, I’m in the process of developing an automated system that you can mail in your dirty shoes by purchasing shoe cleaning services on my website which will allow sending in dirty shoes from anywhere in the United States! Stay tuned!
I’m also in the process of developing technology to effectively clean shoes using an automated agitation device which is not only a “cleaning brush” but a device that combines all elements of a shoe cleaned well by hand into a clean shoe.
I hope you found this information helpful!
– Edward